Hi Everyone,
I had a very interesting experience with Tesla throughout the whole process from test drive, deposit, to ordering and taking delivery so I thought I would gather my thoughts and post them.

Discovering the Model S:
Let me start off by saying that I'm a huge car fanatic. Before I discovered the Tesla Model S, I was determined to get myself a BMW 550xi. I wanted a new car for myself ever since I started college 3 years ago but my parents were adamant about the fact that they wouldn't buy me a new car until I finished my undergraduate studies. So I pretty much spent my years basically looking up various comparable vehicles (BMW 5-series, Audi S etc.) and decided that a 550xi would be the best fit. I would have preferred an M5 but the rear-wheel drive made that option in-feasible for the brutal NY winters. I went to various BMW dealers in Long Island to test drive the 550xi with my parents, and had everything completely spec'ed out in the Fall. When I came home for winter break in December, I visited one of the dealers that I found to be really nice, discussed the options for the car, and had everything configured. They informed me that I would need to place the order about 6-8 weeks before I wanted to take delivery of the car, so I planned on dropping by during Spring break (which would be the next break I would be home for) to do the final paperwork in order to ensure that I had the car by May graduation.

Until last December, I hadn't really known much about Tesla or the Model S. All I knew about the company was that it was started by this guy named Elon Musk who was a founder of Paypal, and also owned SpaceX, which was a pretty big deal among the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineers here at Cornell. Nevertheless, I was interested in looking at a Model S simply because of a single number: 4.0 seconds. That's almost .6 seconds faster than a 550xi, and as I mentioned, I'm a big car fanatic, so 0-60 times played an important part in my purchasing decision. The fact that it was an all electric car, and hence resulted in gas savings, was enough to get my dad interested in the car. The Lexus ES330 which I previously owned gave us ~21/mpg combined while the car was originally rated for ~27/mpg (I drive with a heavy foot) and cost $60 to fill up. So, when my dad heard that the 550xi had a lower mpg rating, he became concerned about the fuel costs adding up.
I mentioned to him that the Model S cost ~90K (remember this was before the price increase), conveniently leaving off the additional costs for extra packages and addons. That got him interested in the car enough to allow me to get a test drive, if I could find a location nearby that was. I mentioned to him that we would need to put down a 5K deposit to drive the car, and to my surprise he was okay with that. A few years ago when I wanted to buy a car for myself, he wouldn't even have let me get near a car that was this expensive, and now he was saying "okay go ahead," so I was extremely pleased.

Unfortunately, the nearest store I could find on Tesla's website was in Manhattan, and back then, they required a $5000 online deposit before you could even contact the store for a test drive, and I was uncomfortable doing that.
Then, one day, while I was walking through Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island, I noticed that there was a Tesla store listed under the mall directory. I wasn't aware that a store had existed on Long Island, and must have missed it while skimming the Tesla website. Since Tesla's website has service centers, and stores, I thought that "stores" wouldn't have cars available for test drives, and were only places where you could buy Tesla gear/swag.

Note: I hope that if Tesla is reading this, they make this clear, since no other car dealership has a similar approach to Tesla's, one doesn't think that they should go to the Tesla store in the mall in order to do a test drive.

So, the following weekend (on 1/11/13), I take my both of my parents, and we decide to go to the Tesla store during the afternoon so I could find out what the car was like and see it in person. At this point, I had already spent the majority of my winter break trying to test drive the Mercedes AMG, and Audi S5 so that I could get a feel of the competition, and I found myself to be leaning very strongly towards BMW (which was my initial choice). I never wanted to purchase an electric car, simply because I felt that it was too much of a hassle to have to deal with range anxiety and public charging stations etc. Nevertheless, in the interest of giving the compitition a fair chance, and wanting to experience the "no-lag" 4.0 second experience, I decided I wanted to go for a test drive. However I went into the entire experience with a bias towards BMW, thinking that nothing could beat the "ultimate driving machine." ( A slogan, that I now feel should be chance to "the ultimate ICE machine", since the Model S is ages beyond a BMW).
I spoke with Kamille, the assistant manager at the store about the Model S, and was very interested in the car. She let us go inside the Model S they had on the showroom and take a look at it, and talked to us about what Tesla is all about (although by this point I had read enough about Tesla to pretty much know everything). We weren't able to get a test drive that night since it was about 8:30PM and the mall was about to close, so she said we should come in the next day to take a drive of the car.
While I really enjoyed looking through the car, I found the lack of soft-touch doors, front and side cameras, multi-contour massage seats, lane departure warning, Heads-up-display etc. to be striking on an almost $100,000, and I once again leaned towards the BMW 550xi (although the 4.0, or 3.9 tested, kept on itching away at my decision).

The following day, I decided to come back with my parents to do a test drive. This was quite an interesting experience. Since Kamille had to stay at the store, she asked one of the other employees to walk us out to the car, where Billy, who was the employee we were going to go on a test drive, would be waiting. The Tesla employee walked us out of the mall, pointed to the car parked across a cross-walk and asked us to go ahead and get in the car.
I walked towards the car, my parents following slowly behind, and Billy noticed me near the car, touching it and trying to get in. He thought I was just a random kid that wanted to look at the car, and started yelling at me, telling me to back away until he noticed my parents come up behind me and realized that we were the customers who he was suppose to take on a test drive. He was extremely apologetic about the entire incident for several minutes, and I couldn't stop laughing about it. While others might have taken offence to the incident, after I got over the initial reaction where I was slightly taken back, I found the entire thing to be extremely funny. To me, the incident in a sense re-iterated that Tesla was a startup, and as a Computer Scientist, I feel like I have a sort of soft-spot for technological startups.

He walked us through the interior of the car, the 17" display was a center of attention as it provided the only glow inside the car during the night time and it was where all the action happened. The lack of interior handles and pockets felt weird, but my dad and I liked it since my mom has a tendency to put stuff in pockets and clutter up the car.
Since the car was going to be for me, I was the first to drive, followed by my dad and my mom. I found adjusting to the size of the car interesting since the back is wider than the front, and the regenerative braking gave an extremely different feel than a normal ICE car when letting go of the accelerator pedal.
However, the best part was when we made the turn on the highway, and I slammed my foot down on the peddle. I will never forget that moment as my body got slammed into the seat and the only reaction I could conjure up was a huge grin. My parents were tossing and turning in the back seat as I roughly turned the car to change lanes, and kept on hitting the gas until I, unfortunately, hit the 80 mph limiter.
IT ABSOLUTELY BLEW AWAY the BMW 550xi! The car's driving dynamics were brilliant, the breaking was amazing (although the smoothness of the Model S makes stops feel harder in the 550xi, making you think that the 550xi has better breaks when it doesnt).
I simply loved the drive, and was very disappointed when it ended.
I went back into the store, and thanked Kamille for letting us test drive the car without putting down a deposit. (Even though its Tesla policy, she allowed us to drive the car because I explained to her that I could give her a deposit that monday, two days later, because it was an auspicious day for us, but needed to test drive the car over the weekend so my parents could experience it as well).

I went back home, now caught in a dilemma between the Model S and 550xi. I couldn't make up my mind on which car I wanted, but since the Model S had a 6 month waiting list at the time, I decided to come back on Monday 1/14 to put down my deposit, and get my reservation #18,278. Now I had until March, when I would need to finalize the 550xi order, to decide.

Or so I thought.

Ordering & Tesla Financing Crisis:
So, on 2/4 I get my "Finalize Your Order" button appear on the Tesla website. This was way earlier than I expected because Kamille had said that the wait list is 6-9 months long, and I would have to wait probably 2-3 months after my reservation to finalize my order and decide on what configuration I wanted.
Nevertheless, I was extremely excited, and eager, so I went ahead and finalized my order. I knew exactly what I wanted (more or less), so I got the email at 8:34PM EST, and finalized by 9:42PM, after a quick conversation with my parents about the color selection and paint armor.
I finalized the following configuration:
Tesla Model S 85KWh Performance with Pearl White exterior, and a Tan interior. All Glass Panoramic roof, Carbon Fiber spoiler, 19" rims, Carbon Fiber decor, Tech and Sound package, paint armor, Twin Charges and a High Power Wall connector.
So I pretty much got everything except the rear two-seats. My mom wanted me to get them (so that if I ever have kids they could use them) but I didn't want to because I didn't realize they fold away when not in use.

And now began the troubles:
My delivery window was March/April. At this point I had pretty much committed to buying the Model S, and we started looking for financing.
As my posts on this forms indicate, financing was quite a big pain in the butt.
I didn't bother looking for financing until the end of February since we had a March/April delivery window and most places only give a 30-60 day loan guarantee.
Then, at the end of February, I emailed Tesla about financing for the car, they initially didn't reply for about a week, so I got upset, and I sent them another email. I finally got a reply from Matt in the financing department, who sent me over the paperwork to apply for a loan. I also asked my dad to apply for financing through our local credit union where we have banked for more than 10 years. Matt didn't reply to us about the loan for a few days, and I started getting nervous.
On 2/10, I had gotten an email from Tesla asking me about my delivery preferences, and I completed it as soon as possible, and to my surprise at the end of the questionaire, I had a delivery window: March 13th-27th.
So, when was 2/22 and I still hadn't heard from Tesla about my loan application, I started to get worried. I followed up with Matt and realized I had made a mistake on the application which was causing a delay, I rectified the mistake and got an immediate reply on the following day that I had been approved for $70K.
Meanwhile, our local credit union had rejected our loan application for $100K.
The pre-MVPA showed that the car, including all the options, tax and charges came out to about $117K, out of which we had given $5K as a deposit. This meant that if we took the Wells Fargo loan (which they gave a terrible rate for 60 months btw), we would still need to get $42K cash to pay the difference on the car, money which we simply didn't have.
I started getting worried, I scurried to find financing for the car, and applied to various credit unions/banks online and based on recommendations on this thread. I read that Alliant had the best rates, financed the full car, and had great response time so I applied there and ended up getting rejected.
I was surprised by all of this because, my father (under whose name the car was going to be financed), had great credit history 750+ and makes $125K+/year. So we tried to do joint applications with both of my parents but still kept on getting rejected.
We got various reasons, for example, one local credit union said at first they could approve us for a $100K loan, and then when we went in, they said they couldn't do so because they considered Tesla to be an "exotic" car, and they didn't finance exotic cars.
Places like Chase (with whom we have our home loan), refused to give a loan for more than $70K because they didn't give loans that were more than 2x previous car loan amount (which was ~$35K for the Lexus ES330 we had bought in '05).
Alliant rejected our loan application because their underwriters had a hard time understanding our fluctuations in income, since some years my parents work through our consulting company, and other years they have a full time job, so the tax situation was slightly complex.

Meanwhile, I get a call from a Tesla employee on 3/7, a Thursday, saying that my car would go into production the following Monday, and that it would be ready for delivery on 3/21.
I explained to him the problems I was having with financing, and that I had been in discussions with Matt in financing to try and come up with a solution to get money for the car. He said that my car was scheduled to go into production on Monday, and that if, by the start of business day (9:00am PST/12:00pm EST), I could get him a definite answer about whether or not I would be able to take delivery of the car, he would be able to move us to the back of the reservation queue or refund our $5000 deposit. So, I tried to make some final attempts to get financing from various banks throughout Thursday and Friday to no avail. During those two weeks, I probably ended up spending close to 5 hours/day coordinating with Tesla, and banks about the financing situation, and somehow trying to obtain a loan for the car.

Then, I get a call on Sunday morning from some guy on the delivery team (a manager, I don't remember his name) saying that Tesla would not refund my $5000 deposit, nor would they push my order to the back of the reservation queue, and give me a new reservation number so that I had more time to save up the $42K that was required to cover the gap between the financing and the value of the car. He pretty much said that if, by Monday morning, I wasn't able to pay for the car, they would simply cancel the order and that would be that. According to him, the car had already gone into production whereas my delivery specialist had clearly told me that it would not go on the assembly line until Monday morning. I was extremely angry about the entire situation, and I immediately wrote an email to the people at Tesla, and to Elon, about the situation. Late Sunday night, I got a reply from Elon saying that they should be able to give me a new reservation and push my order to the back of the line.

Monday morning I called my delivery specialist around 9:30am EST, telling him the news and asked him to get me a new reservation number. The instant I hung up the phone, I got a phone call from the manager at Bethpage Federal Credit Union (in Long Island), stating that he was replying to a loan request I made about two weeks ago. I had followed up with Bethpage the week before about the status of my loan, and upon hearing that I was rejected, I asked them for a reason, so they said they would have the manager call me back with details.
The manager basically said the same thing that other banks' representatives had told me, they couldn't approve the loan because it was more than 2x the previous highest loan amount. I was extremely upset by this line of reasoning, and told him, that the policy was stupid and made no logical sense. I asked him to reconsider my loan application, and he said that he would do so if I was able to send him tax returns and other supporting documents. I did so, and about an hour and half later, someone from Bethpage FCU contacted me saying that they had approved my loan for $100,000 @ 2.71%/apr for 72-months (which came out to a monthly payment of $1,500).
I asked them to send me all the documentation, which I received at 11:30am, read, and called my delivery specialist to say that we were back on track. I emailed Elon as well to update him, and got the following response: "cool, credit unions are often the best way to go"

After all of this, I was glad that things were back on track, and I asked my delivery specialist to postpone delivery from 3/21 (which is the date he gave me), to 4/19 since that was an auspicious day according to the Hindu calendar, and also the two year anniversary of the closing for our home (the first home purchase for the family in the states). He said that he would make it so.
I followed up with my bank and Tesla over the next week or two about what I needed to do for the insurance binder etc, and they said that all that stuff would happen about a week before delivery when they shipped the car to me.
Delivery Fiasco:
So, things were looking good, at the end of March I got a call from Tesla that my car was built, and waiting in the White Plains service center waiting for delivery on 4/19. I said that sounded great, and made plans to come home for the weekend for delivery.
Then, I started thinking about getting some after market work done on the car. I had already called up Tesla and removed the paint armor from the order after reading these fourms. So I contacted several places on the Northeast about getting work done, and after a lot of back and forth, and negotiations, I decided to get the work done from Gus at Technik 1 in NYC.
He was suppose to install radar detectors, jammers, paint armor, front/back parking sensors, and window tint. I got a very good quote from him during the second week of April, and he said he would need a week to get the car ready. So I contacted Tesla to have the car delivery moved forward by a week.
They said that they would be able to do so, as long as I had the bank send them the check, and got insurance for the car etc.
So on 4/10, I went back and forth with my bank, and insurance provider to get all of the paperwork done, and within a day, I had my bank mail out a check for $100K, I transferred remaining payment via ACH, and had worked with AutoNation the week before to get my old car applied as trade-in towards the car loan. So, I sent the deposit, a copy of the bank check and insurance paperwork to Tesla the following morning 4/11 and asked them to send the car to Gus as soon as possible so he could have enough time to work on it, and I could still take delivery on 4/19 as originally planned.
Then Lauren, my delivery specialist, calls me up from Tesla to tell me on the afternoon of 4/12 that my car, which they said had been delivered to White Plains service center two weeks ago, WAS STILL ON THE FACTORY FLOOR IN FREEMONT!

That was absolutely ridiculous, I was so angry at them for not realizing this sooner. For two whole weeks, we had been talking, and everyone at Tesla claimed that the car was in White Plains, and it was the day that they needed to put the car on a truck, and ship it out, did they realize: uh oh, the car isn't here! The inner communications at Tesla was absolutely atrocious, its as if no one ever communicated with each other, or for that span of 2 weeks had decided to take inventory and make sure that the cars were actually on the lot as the system claimed. I was slightly annoyed, but by this time, my father was extremely angry. I had spent every day or every other day on the phone with Tesla coordinating financing, delivery and other logistics and my dad was absolutely furious that they didn't seem to care or pay attention to what was happening. He almost cancelled the entire order!
Lauren had the car put on a truck that day itself, and said that it would take a week to bring the car on the east cost. I was extremely angry at them for this, but the car ended up getting delivered to Gus on the morning of 4/17. Gus, who had been great thus far, moved some of his other work, and got everything except the Beltronics system installed by friday night, 4/19 (the Beltronics system was on back order, and I still haven't gotten it installed).
He drove the car over to the Queens service center on Friday night, and early Saturday morning, the car was delivered to our house.

The guy who did the delivery was great, he walked us through the car, unfortunately, they didn't have the front bracket so he couldn't install the front licence plate, but he came back the following morning to do it.

The car was a lot of fun to drive, and Gus's installation was great. Unfortunately, I barely put 50 miles on the car before I had to come back on campus Sunday afternoon. I'll be going home this week and probably just go joy-riding across the island and will update on the car's handling and driving dynamics.

I realized the story may be a bit too long for people to read, so here are the key takeaways:

Trying to finance the entire amount for the car is extremely difficult if you have never purchased a car above 45-50K, but with some persistence, you can get a very good loan at a great rate if you make 125K+/year. (If you are having financing problems, or have any financing related questions, feel free to send me an email, and I would be happy to help out).

Dealing with Tesla's customer service is a pain in the butt! They have terrible inter-department communications, and seem to forget that they are selling a 100K+ product to a class of people whose time is very very valuable. Make sure you are following up with them at every step so that they don't forget to do some stuff (Like ship your car from the factory!). Also, the end of the quarter dash was absolutely terrible, so I'm hoping that it will be much smoother for people in the future.

Gus does an excellent job with aftermarket installations, is a very nice person and easy to work with. I recommend him if you are in the Northeast region and want to have some work done. (Feel free to email me for his contact information, and let him know I referred you so he will give you a good discount).

The car is a lot of fun to drive, and in the end, worth the annoying Tesla customer service (at least for me, its worth it).

(I would love to post more pictures if someone can tell me how I can shrink the image size during upload.)

the nerve of them! parents these days, huh? I mean there's no reason why they shouldn't have bought you a $100k luxury car the day you got your license, you know?

just promise yourself that you'll treat your own kids better one day. that's all you can really do at this point...

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Yeah, when I read that part of the story almost spat my caviar and champagne... 13 years ago when my dad let me inherit his Nissan Sunny 1.6 litre sedan with 250,000 km on the odometer, while he kept paying the insure, my friends called me spoiled! Different worlds I guess.

loan for $100,000 @ 2.71%/apr for 72-months (which came out to a monthly payment of $1,500).

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$1,500/month is a lot of money for a car. I'm sure that as a CS major with a degree from Cornell, you're likely to find a good paying job, but the time to save money is when you are young. I know far too many 40 and 50-somethings that made good money in good times and didn't save a dime. Some were financially ruined during the recession because they had nothing to fall back on. Others are facing the prospect of retirement with little or nothing above Social Security payments, and praying that they don't lose their jobs before they can go on Social Security.

It's always wise to put money away and build a base of retirement funds and investments while you can. Not having to worry a lot about money is priceless in of itself.

But since your Model S is already here, enjoy! At least you won't be spending any more money on gasoline.

For those of you who are judging me based on my age and my post, I can say with more than a 99% certainty that none of you have seen the poverty that I have seen. My parents are first generation immigrants to this country, and I definitely do not come from money. If I did, I wouldn't have so much trouble getting a loan, would I?
Also, I plan on paying for the car from the money I make trading TSLA, and I'm making good progress thus far, so hopefully things go well and I don't need to dip into my income for the car.

For those of you who are judging me based on my age and my post, I can say with more than a 99% certainty that none of you have seen the poverty that I have seen. My parents are first generation immigrants to this country, and I definitely do not come from money. If I did, I wouldn't have so much trouble getting a loan, would I?
Also, I plan on paying for the car from the money I make trading TSLA, and I'm making good progress thus far, so hopefully things go well and I don't need to dip into my income for the car.

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Since I put myself through engineering school 30 years ago, with a baby on my hip (and your parents are footing the bill for you) with no financial aid of any kind, I can say with 99% certainty that I have experienced more of the poverty that you only talk about seeing. Your assumptions are naive. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have the car of your dreams. The responses you're seeing is because your initial post comes off as a bit, well, 'my parents are buying me a car and I'm so angry there were some bumps in the road'. (Tell your parents I think they did a nice thing and congrats to them for doing well enough in life that they can give their child such a nice present.)

For those of you who are judging me based on my age and my post, I can say with more than a 99% certainty that none of you have seen the poverty that I have seen. My parents are first generation immigrants to this country, and I definitely do not come from money. If I did, I wouldn't have so much trouble getting a loan, would I?
Also, I plan on paying for the car from the money I make trading TSLA, and I'm making good progress thus far, so hopefully things go well and I don't need to dip into my income for the car.

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Very nice! Seriously; congrats are in order.

However, just to keep the "My Dad" part of the thread going: back in the 60's my Schwinn StingRay was stolen and I told my dad I wanted a new one. He said: "you'd better get a job.":smile:

Folks, he didn't say his parents will be making all the payments for him, just that wouldn't buy him a new car years ago and that they helped with the financing and signed for the loan now.

Starting salary with a CS degree from a good school is typically $80k - $100k. After maxing out a 401k and withholdings for taxes that still leaves $4000 - $5000 a month take home. More than enough to comfortably afford a $1500 car payment.

Regardless, congrats on the upcoming graduation and new car. Enjoy them both!

First off, OP, congrats on your car. Honestly thrilled for anyone who has a Model S.

Like so many others, though, I can't help but compare his situation to my own. When I graduated college, my parents bought me a brand new VW New Beetle (first model year). It was $16k if memory serves and I was as thrilled as if it were a Maserati. I was also fully aware of exactly how lucky, blessed, and, yes, spoiled I was. I drove that car until last year and I still miss it.

Fast forward about 15 years and I'm about to buy my Model S and spend nearly 10x as much as on that Beetle. I'm paying for it myself and even though I'm making more money now than I ever dreamed possible, paying this much for a car has been a major mental hurdle to get past, even with being able to put down nearly 4/5ths of the car in cash.

No point I guess rather than just always amazed/interested to hear about others' circumstances.

You guys are harsh! Cut the guy some slack. He was clever in navigating obstacles that would deter less motivated buyers, and we've all had our frustrations with TSLA's customer service and need a place to vent from time to time.

He is clearly a bright person since he's an engineering undergrad at Cornell, and last I checked it's a very rigorous program with very good earnings prospects for its grads.

Every Model S on the road is a win for the team. So I say, cheers to you Hershey. Welcome to the owners club.

A Model S instead of an ICE-vehicle (in this case a gas-guzzler BMW, Audi or Lexus) is also a win for the environment that we, and all our loved ones share. And it’s a win for the EV-cause and brings us all one small step closer to Tesla’s GEN III-car.

So, if someone is going to spend that amount of money on a car, every time they spend it on a Tesla – IMHO – that’s the best possible outcome.

From a distance, it does seem extravagant even for a Cornell Comp. Sci. undergrad - I can't imagine driving in an MSP to an interview for a fresh grad position! - but, may you keep this car for a long time (well into your working years) and appreciate your good fortune to the utmost.

My son is going to get a then-16-year-old Mini Clubman in 2024 unless a small EV makes more sense at that time

From a distance, it does seem extravagant even for a Cornell Comp. Sci. undergrad - I can't imagine driving in an MSP to an interview for a fresh grad position! - but, may you keep this car for a long time (well into your working years) and appreciate your good fortune to the utmost.

My son is going to get a then-16-year-old Mini Clubman in 2024 unless a small EV makes more sense at that time

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Fair enough. Its just a nice treat for myself since I got accepted a full time offer at an ideal employment around Christmas time. I know people always say cars are a terrible investment b/c they depriciate fast etc. but I'm going back to get a PhD in 2 years, I'll be living on relatively low income then, so its not enough time for me to be able to pay off a mortgage if I decided to buy a house. I'm gonna be saving a bunch of money anyway that I plan on investing in futures and options (I have been doing this for about 6 years now, so I know the game pretty well). So why shouldn't I spend some of my earnings on a fun little toy. Plus, my dad would never think of buying such an expensive car for himself, so I think its kinda nice to be able to say I bought the car for myself, and then have him drive it over the weekends etc. because I'm at college, or I'm working or traveling or whatever. I have to pretty much beg him to drive the car because he thinks he might scratch it or it might be damaged or whatever, its kinda funny actually